Midnight Rambler
by IronAmerica
Summary: The Mathesons have problems, but they're Bass' kind of problems. Serial Killer AU.


I'm at 90K. Have a story! Bass has problems. So do the Mathesons.

Un-beta'ed, so quibble away.

- o – o -

Midnight Rambler

When Bass was younger, he liked small animals. He had a butterfly collection, and his parents thought he wanted to be a taxidermist when he grew up. They shook their heads and rolled their eyes when he started reading about famous serial killers and took notes on their methods and how they'd been caught—or not.

"Boys will be boys," mommy said.

"Boys will be boys," daddy agreed.

Bass kept lots of notes. He liked taking them. He liked…_fear_. It smelled better than most perfumes on the market. One of his notebooks (it was the one that got him in the most trouble when mommy found it) had his ideas for capturing the scent and selling it. He was sure he'd have made a fortune off of it. Bass liked it better when he was left alone to write, though. Sometimes, he brought friends with him and showed them his collections.

Some of them didn't…understand.

After a while, people stopped wanting to be his friend. Bass was okay with that, after a while. He could still get small animals to like him. (He never did anything to the cats, though. He liked cats. They were the only animals in the world who played with their food before they ate it…if they ate it at all.)

Then Bass turned eighteen, and his parents made him enlist in the military. Bass didn't want to, but he decided that—since mommy and daddy dearest _insisted_—he was going to join the Marines. What was life without a challenge? Besides, they were like cats: They got to play with their food before they ate it, if they did at all.

His best friend was Miles Matheson. They met after Bass got on the bus. Miles got clobbered because Bass knew how to sneak around. (It had come in handy when he'd had to hide the bodies on his own. Was it _his_ fault that his…well, he couldn't call them _food_, because he wasn't going to eat them, but… Well, his _prey_ bled, he supposed, bled out. It wasn't his fault.) Miles waited until their drill instructor turned the lights out before sliding out of his bunk. The older teenager put his hand over Bass' mouth, and a k-bar on his jugular.

"Laugh at me again, and I'll cut your throat."

Bass grinned and licked a long, wet stripe up Miles' palm. Miles glowered in disgust, but didn't cut his throat. (The evidence would have been hard to hide.) After that, it was hard to separate them. If the DIs wanted to find Bass, they looked for Miles, and vice versa. The other recruits in the barracks gave them a wide berth. Bass was friendly to everyone, and he always had contraband goodies hidden _somewhere_ on his person (he hid them in the DI's office, a fact that only Miles knew). No one wanted to ask for anything from him, though—Miles would give them weird stares, like he was trying to figure out just how many pieces he could cut them into before he got caught. Bass… Well, Bass was just avoided on general principle. He was nuts. Fun to be around, but… There just wasn't something…_right_ about him.

After they graduated, the two got split up as fast as possible. Miles spent his two week leave in Chicago with his brother, before shipping out to South America to be a peacekeeper. Bass spent two weeks on a beach, having lots of fun. (He had _no_ idea who'd done it, but three college co-eds had gone missing. They'd turned up after he'd gotten shipped out to Iraq to play nice with the locals. He'd cried when he'd seen them—and resolved not to leave any of his toys under the dock again. It was messy. And they weren't as pretty as they had been when he'd invited them in for drinks.)

Bass didn't exactly like the guys he worked with. None of them liked butterflies, or small animals. Their interest in the good looking ladies on base was….disgusting. Beautiful women were supposed to be treasured, dressed up nicely, and kept _perfect_. Bass started getting odd looks after he told his "buddies" that. Then they started painting "fag" on his footlocker. He gave the lacy thongs to one of his girlfriends who liked that kind of thing.

He had _no_ idea what happened, but then that IED kind of went…_boom_. Bass cried over his friends. The doctors had to sedate him to make him not go out and kill everyone who might have had something to do with his friends dying. (Bass sent a letter to Miles, expressing his annoyance at how messy Miles' idea of an IED had been. One of his girls had died, damn it! That had _not_ been part of the plan!)

His commanding officer visited him in the base infirmary, and offered to give Bass some leave. He was sympathetic ("Losing close friends can be hard—it's like losing part of your family."), and kind ("Don't get up. I told the corpsman you needed some more time."). Bass hated him. He had, at one point, kind of respected the man. That had changed when the bastard decided he had to be friendly. Bass fed his cats—strays that he technically wasn't supposed to keep—and whistled as he sharpened his knives. The cats rubbed against his legs, purring happily. At least _someone_ didn't do things they weren't supposed to.

The base commander found Bass' CO strung up in his office. The whole thing was elegantly set up, according to the coroner. The man didn't think the lieutenant had been _that_ unbalanced, but people will surprise you. The one thing about the suicide that didn't make sense (aside from the man suddenly snapping and deciding to hang himself, obviously), was the fact that he'd carved two crosses into his palms. There was no blood on the rope.

After that, everyone on the base got shuffled out to other bases. No one wanted to stay at "Camp Death" much longer after that. Bass sat in the back of the truck, holding one of the kittens in his lap, feeding it leftover strips of ham from his MRE. The other guys left him alone—his cats had had to be destroyed, because they couldn't come with him. The corpsman who'd given Bass one of the kittens that had made it away was Bass' best friend for a few days. (The corpsman got a transfer back home, and he got to marry his girlfriend. Bass got pictures of the wedding, and decided that the girlfriend wasn't much to look at.)

His next leave was spent stateside. Bass kept his kitten in a carrier under his seat for most of the trip, pulling the little ball of fluff out as soon as they got to the hotel. The cat hated flying almost as much as he did. Bass left the cat in the bathtub with a spare towel and a bowl of food and another of water, just in case. He walked around the city, looking for something…_fun_ to do. No one caught his eye, at least until the last day of his leave. She liked cats, which was in her favor. Bass brought her back to his hotel room to see Green, the kitten. A few days after he shipped out, the police found his girl in her home. Her throat had been cut, but there was no blood in sight. She was in a nice dress, and was done up rather prettily.

Two crosses had been carved into her palms.

Bass jumped around from contract to contract. After eight, his superiors made him go to the reserves. Bass took it with an extreme amount of protest. He calmed down when Miles came to his room in the barracks, holding a new kitten up. It was an invitation to come live with him. Green and Holly—the girl kitten Miles had given him—got along swimmingly. Green was a lazy bastard, but he was still Bass' favorite.

Miles lived out in the countryside in Pennsylvania. It was a nice two-story affair, colonial design, if Bass wasn't mistaken. His nearest neighbor was eight miles away, and kept trying to set Miles up with his oldest daughter. Miles wasn't about to join the church, and turned him down. Bass _definitely_ wasn't going to join a church that didn't allow television or computers, and didn't even acknowledge the man.

Miles' niece, Charlie—the little girl Bass had read such gushing praise about in Miles' infrequent letters—lives with them. She was fifteen, and had this…this _air_ about her. She was almost perfect. (If she weren't Miles' precious niece, Bass would consider making her one of his special girls. He'd keep it clean, too—a nice dose of curare, or maybe just cyanide—and he'd put her in blue, because she's not a pink kind of girl. But she's Miles' niece, so it's hands-off.)

Bass and Miles went right back to how they had been during boot camp. Miles had to keep a lot of cleaning supplies handy, because… Well, he wasn't as tidy as Bass. He just liked the blood. His signature was carving a random bible verse into his prey's chest. There's no rhyme or reason—it's just to screw with the cops. It was like Bass' crosses, except Bass made sure his kills were always good looking when he was done. Miles just liked killing and driving the FBI up the wall because it amused him. Charlie and Bass both liked watching him work, though. Miles was a horny bastard after he was done, and it was a coin toss as to who was in line for it after he was done working. (Bass thinks the idea is a bit disgusting, but what the hell. At least he doesn't have to deal with sharing his girls with Miles. He prefers keeping them to himself.)

The basement in Miles' home was where the three of them played the most. It was soundproof, so no one could hear anything if the door was shut. There's good lighting and ventilation. Miles can plug in space heaters during the winter if it gets too cold. And there's always someone down there to play with. Bass learned that, if he wanted to have something to do, he had to find his own toys to play with, because Miles didn't like sharing. He _really_ didn't like sharing…

The only place in the house Bass wasn't allowed to go was upstairs. It kind of annoyed him—he was practically family! He got consigned to the guest room instead, although it was actually nice. Definitely nicer than his barracks had been, of course. His cats liked the place too, although Bass nearly killed Charlie when she decided to practice on one of Holly's kittens. Miles held his head under water until he agreed to apologize to Charlie for trying to kill her—family didn't kill family. Charlie got all of her privileges revoked for three months, and had to replace Bass' kitten.

His room in Miles' house isn't that boring, though. He's got plenty of space for his things, and there's room for Holly and her litter of kittens. Green stays curled up on the windowsill in the front room, snoozing. (He _was_ kind of old, though, so…) Miles came in often enough that Bass wasn't too bored at night.

September rolled in with a gust of cold air when Bass finally found out why he wasn't allowed to go upstairs. A man named Jeremy Baker came to the door, toting two suitcases and an overstuffed backpack with him. Bass had slammed the door in his face and had gone to find Miles, hoping to figure out just _why_ some dweeb in glasses and a pastel pink polo shirt thought he was allowed in the house. As it turned out, the dweeb was a teacher with a background in abnormal and childhood psychology. (His thesis had been on Miles, actually. Jeremy had been under investigation by the FBI when they found out that he'd been in contact with a real-life serial killer they'd been trying to find. It hadn't ended well for ADA Flynn, apparently.)

Mr. Baker spent the mornings in the kitchen with Charlie, teaching her algebra, geometry, physics, and English. Charlie hated English and algebra, but adored physics. She picked up geology as a side hobby. (She'd figured out that she could use talc to keep her knives from slipping out of her hands, which had sparked her interest in the field. Jeremy got her a lesson plan to follow when Bass told him about Charlie's hobby.) In the afternoons, after lunch, he disappeared upstairs. Bass still had no idea what was upstairs, but decided that Miles had an illegitimate bastard or something he wanted to keep hidden. (Bass got an interest in natural medicines after that, and started growing Queen Anne's Lace for Charlie. Just in case. Because… Well, children were creepy, and he didn't like them. Babies were worse.)

Baker lived with the Mathesons for nine months out of the year—September to June—as a private tutor. It was practical, because it kept the state from investigating Miles for negligence. A social worker was the next visitor, after Jeremy had been there for a week. Grace Beaumont was a sweet woman. Kind of boring, but sweet. That was when Bass found out about…_Danny_.

Danny was Miles' nephew. He had developmental issues and lingering trauma from some unnamed incident that left him a basket case some days. That explained why he stayed upstairs, and why Bass wasn't allowed near him. Jeremy tutored Danny in the afternoons, except when Mrs. Beaumont came by to see that Danny was doing okay.

Bass got dirty looks from Grace when she found out that a second man had moved into the house. She didn't like him. That was okay—the feeling was basically mutual. She had a…air, about her. Bass would have added her to his collection, but he preferred young, unattached women to old maids with kids of their own. Grace's visits ended with her telling Miles to make sure Danny didn't get exposed to too much stimulus at once, and to just make sure he was eating okay.

The Matheson family settled back into a routine after Grace's visit passed without incident—as usual. Jeremy got on Bass' nerves, but he'd calmed down. Jeremy was good with cats, and Holly liked him. So did Green. Bass was just going to have to make sure Jeremy didn't end up liking the cats more than him. (He was possessive and jealous, even if he just wanted something pretty to look at every day. Miles just wanted blood and a big fuss to be made about him.)

Eve Jaffe is their next guest. Bass lost the coin toss and sulked on his usual chair in the basement as Charlie got to play with her first kill. Eve spent a lot of time whimpering and sobbing. She'd been passing through on her way to visit her daddy in Philadelphia. She wasn't going there anymore… If she wasn't begging Charlie to let her go, she was asking Bass to make sure they didn't hurt the little boy. Bass had no idea what the kid was talking about, and walked away, yawning and stretching.

Charlie learned how to burn bodies after that. It wasn't very good, and it wasn't what Bass would have done, but she had to learn how to dispose of her toys when she was done with them. She had to pick a dumpsite on the other side of the state, or out of the state first. Miles finally agreed with Bass and made her pick six, just in case. Jeremy took notes for his next paper. (Bass had decided that Miles kept Jeremy around to puff his ego up. The former Marine thought it was a waste of time—souvenirs and an overinflated ego got you caught. His notes said so. That was why he assigned butterflies or flowers to different kills. It was basically impossible and kind of stupid to prosecute a guy for wanting to collect _butterflies_ and fucking _flowers_.)

Miles was in a towering bad mood after Charlie dumped the body. Charlie and Bass made a list of anything they could have _possibly_ done wrong…and then realized what actually happened when Danny crawled out from one of the kitchen cabinets, clutching a battered hardback copy of _The Wizard of Oz_ and a flashlight to his chest. Danny wasn't a criminal mastermind by any stretch of the imagination, but it turned out he knew where Bass kept his stash of curare. Eve had died painlessly.

Miles yelled at his nephew for almost an hour. Danny quivered in terror, clutching his book in white-knuckled hands. Danny wasn't supposed to leave his room unless Uncle Miles was with him, or unless Jeremy said he needed to play outside in the fenced-in side yard where he couldn't (_be seen_) get hurt.

Bass liked Danny's eyes during the man's tirade. They were nice and wide and blue…they were…_innocent_.

A yellow, blue-eyed kitten makes its way into Danny's room a few days later, courtesy of a surprised but somewhat pleased Jeremy.

Bass learned the finer points of body disposal after someone started encroaching on their hunting grounds. If it had been under different circumstances, Bass was pretty sure he would have liked William Strausser. Unfortunately, the man had more than a few problems. For one thing, he'd broken into Miles' home while Bass, Miles, and Charlie were out celebrating Charlie's sixteenth birthday. Jeremy had been home, looking after Danny. For another, he'd played with things that weren't his.

The trio had come home to find Jeremy tied spread-eagled over the kitchen table, wheezing and breathing shallowly. His chest had barely been moving, which had driven Miles and Bass a little…kooky. Charlie had pelted right up the stairs to check on her baby brother. Danny's door had been broken down. Bass got Jeremy bundled into his room and bandaged the man's injuries before he joined Charlie and Miles in their hunt for Danny.

They found him in the fenced-in playground behind the house. Strausser got shot in the head and chest seven times. Danny got his clothes back, and Charlie hauled him back up to the house where she promptly dumped him in the steel tub Miles cleaned his knives in. Bass and Miles came back in a few minutes later, dragging a limp and incredibly _dead_ Strausser between them. Charlie continued scrubbing Danny down until his skin looked raw and the water had turned pink, before she joined her uncle and her uncle's friend in the basement.

Getting rid of Strausser would have been a problem, except for the fact that the FBI was kind of looking for him. Miles, for once in his life, pretended not to be his usual flamboyant self and turned the man's corpse over to the local FBI. Danny's injuries—and Jeremy's state of near-deadness—got them out of any murder charges that might have been involved.

It wasn't their best work, but it was necessary. Miles would never have hurt a child like that. Neither would Bass. It just wasn't… Well, _right_ was for normal, boring people. Nah. It was more like it was against their…code. Yeah, that sounded about right. It was against their code to touch the little anklebiters.

A few days after Danny turned twelve, Miles took them on a road trip. Instead of taking his precious vintage red Camaro, they took Jeremy's car and Charlie's brand new white van. Danny sat in the back of Jeremy's beat up Ford, clutching his inhaler and backpack. The road trip ended at a mall several hours away, way outside their usual hunting ground. Bass had, again, convinced Miles to do something that wasn't stupid (not that he'd put it like that, anyways.)

Miles came to this spot rarely, since Charlie liked shopping here and they couldn't take too many people or it would have been impossible for his niece to come back. Charlie led Danny around, holding her nearly catatonic brother close by her side. She giggled and flirted back with the boys who talked to her like a normal sixteen-year-old, rolling her eyes and telling them that she had to look after her stupid brother or she wouldn't get to go to the movies on the weekend. (She got sixteen phone numbers by the end of the day; Bass counted.)

Danny takes another puff of his inhaler when the crowds—it's almost Christmas, so the shopping mall is a bit packed—get to be too much. Charlie holds him upright as his limbs stop reacting as fast as they should have, and the girl shoots Bass an evil look as she and Danny walk past him. It's not Bass' fault Danny couldn't hold a dinky little dose of GHB…

Besides, the GHB was Miles' idea. They'd done it before—before Bass had come to join the family, anyways—to lure prey in. People liked kids, and they liked kids who needed some extra help more. Danny had been perfect without the need to be drugged until the age of eight, when he'd started getting a bit too rebellious for Miles' tastes. Danny hadn't wanted to play the games his uncle and older sister liked, so Miles started drugging him into compliance.

Miles passed Charlie and Danny next, slipping her a few dollars to buy Danny and herself something at the food court. Bass sat down at a table next to them, picking at a slice of greasy pizza with a mulish expression on his face. He threw the pizza out in disgust a few minutes later, slipping Charlie a note telling her to hurry up and find someone on his way to the trash can.

Charlie used the last of the money to buy a tube of blood-red lipstick and plonked Danny down on a bench near the food court while she went to find a mirror. Danny stayed on his bench, staring at the floor. Bass watched him from the upper level, sipping on a half-way decent cup of coffee. Jeremy sat across the table from him, reading a book on abnormal psychology and drinking a froufrou holiday-themed mocha. (Bass swore the man was doing this crap to annoy him, but didn't care enough to complain. Besides, Jeremy gave excellent blow jobs, and Bass wasn't about to lose that.)

Jeremy clears his throat an hour later, gesturing with his newest drink—something heinously pink, with a peppermint stick in it in lieu of a straw—to the bench Danny was sitting on. Danny was staring at the floor, shrugging occasionally as the nice-looking man in a business suit spoke to him. A woman with blonde hair and legs to die for came up to him, and a boy that Bass decided was their son followed her. The man looked up at his wife and said something to her, gesturing at Danny. Bass smiled into his mug of steaming hot coffee, inhaling the scent of cinnamon and cloves. Oh, this was a good one…

They'd never managed to snag a family of three at once.

Charlie appeared out of nowhere, looking frantic and close to tears. She grabbed her brother off the bench, hugging him tightly enough to break bones while she gabbled something at the man who'd been talking to Danny. She was wearing the bright red lipstick that was doing interesting things to Bass. (He'd decided at that moment that, if he had to dress her up like one of his girls, she'd look stunning in a red sheathe dress that just barely covered her butt, with six-inch heels on her feet and that blood-red lipstick turning her mouth into a sinful line full of dark promises. Daring, bold, and just enough of a promise to drive men wild…)

Miles comes up to Jeremy and Bass, telling them silently to follow. Charlie flirted with the boy whose father stopped to talk to Danny as she led her brother back to the van and Jeremy's ford. The kid blushed and scribbled his number on her palm, drawing a long-suffering sigh from his father and an amused grin from his mother. Miles appeared out of nowhere, holding his slightly modified stun gun and smiled winningly at Tom, who tried to fight back. Bass wrapped his arm around Julia—mommy dearest—and pulled her flush against his chest while the chloroform did its work. Charlie knocked Jason the ground with a well-placed kick and straddled his hips, bending down low enough that he could look down her shirt. (Bass knew, from experience, that she never wore a bra on hunting trips.)

Danny sat next to Jeremy in the back of Charlie's van for the ride home, clutching a peppermint-flavored hot chocolate that Jeremy had given him like his life depended on it. Bass saw his face in the rearview mirror and snickered softly. Danny looked dazed and out of it, and his cornflower blue eyes were wide again.

Charlie was pouting by the time they got home. Miles had made her ride in Jeremy's car, just so she didn't start playing before they were safely away from their hunting spot. Danny gave her an awkward hug, spilling some of his hot cocoa when she shoved him away. Jeremy led the twelve-year-old back into the house, leaving the heavy lifting to Bass, Miles, and Charlie.

Miles had already laid claim to Tom, and had the man halfway up the drive before he woke up from his tazing. The former Marine hauled his bound captive upright and pointed at where Bass and Charlie had his family held hostage. Julia was limp, and Charlie was having a lot of fun making sure Jason was too busy to think about escaping. Tom quit struggling pretty quick, and didn't resist as Miles led him into the kitchen to where the cellar door was.

The man gave Danny a sad look, and the boy looked away, a miserable expression on his face. Bass wondered, after he'd tied his newest special girl to a chair, if Danny was a slow and dimwitted as everyone thought he was. He shrugged the thought away. If it were true, Danny would have killed the three of them and Jeremy by now.

Later in the day, Bass started playing with wifey. It's just past four in the morning, and Julia was screaming into her gag, trying to get free so she could reach hubby, who was strung up from the ceiling. Charlie had Jason tied up in her bedroom and was having fun. Bass could hear the thumps from the kitchen, and Charlie's moans of delight. (Somehow, Bass didn't think Miles was going to approve of anyone touching Charlie. He was bitchy and kind of freakishly possessive like that.)

The man shushed Julia gently, rubbing the side of her face and cooing sweet things to make her shut up. She stopped, eventually, sobbing into her gag. Bass had to replace the tape three times before he finally went upstairs. Julia looked a lot better with her hair pulled back into an elegant twist, although Bass still couldn't decide how he wanted to display her when it finally came to disposal time. It was annoying.

Julia began screaming again around eight in the morning. Miles had woken her up by throwing a bucket of almost-boiling water in her face before he'd started working on Tom. Bass brought breakfast down a little later, and chided Miles for damaging his property. Mrs. Neville quailed away from both of them, hyperventilating into her gag until she finally passed out. Miles ate quickly, talking about his latest plans as he waved a forkful of eggs and bacon around like a conductor's baton. Bass couldn't help but get wrapped up in Miles' plans.

Then Jeremy had to interrupt, calling down the stairs to tell the men that Charlie had woken up and was about to burn the house down as she tried to cook something for her latest toy. That got them out of the basement pretty quickly. (Charlie's last cooking experiment had somehow ended with the…_thing_ crawling out of the pan. Bass had never seen Miles move that fast to get away. They'd ended up burning several good sets of cookery to get rid of whatever Charlie had accidentally made.)

Charlie sat at the table while Miles made French toast. Bass tried not to pay attention to the fact that Charlie was wearing a red thong, Jason's button-up shirt, and nothing underneath it. It was…kind of hard. The girl kissed her uncle on the cheek as she grabbed the food, squeaking as Miles slapped her on the rear as she left. Bass rolled his eyes and helped himself to more bacon.

"They're always like this," Jeremy said morosely, grumbling something obscene into his coffee mug. Jeremy was not a morning person, unlike everyone else in the household. If Danny was, though, Bass didn't know.

"He was like this at boot camp too," Bass replied, smiling around a large mouthful of eggs. Jeremy groaned and buried his face in his hands. The man was about to continue when the thumping started again. "Thankfully, he was not like his niece."

"Thank god for small favors," Jeremy muttered after Miles left the kitchen with a breakfast tray for Danny and himself. "Man's got enough issues." Bass laughed and pulled up another tab on his laptop as he tried to figure out what he was supposed to do with Mrs. Neville. He liked unattached girls better for a reason—it wasn't as hard to figure out how he wanted them to look when he took them back to their homes. With married women, or women with children, he had to be careful, or they ended up looking like whores or teenagers. Or grandmothers, which was just as bad.

A few days later, Bass finally got Julia presentable. She looked beautiful in lilac and silver. It wasn't the first time he's had to use two colors for one of his girls, but he didn't like it. Still, Julia looked magnificent. Her husband didn't think so, and looked away, tears in his eyes. Julia managed to hold her husband's hand, squeezing his fingers tightly.

Miles was an artist, even if his ego was bigger than most artists' combined. His victims were his canvases, and Tom was indeed a masterpiece. Bass inhaled the subtle scent of perfume in Julia's hair as he watched Miles torture Tom until the man passed out. The scent of fear was the headiest scent in the world, as far as Bass was concerned.

The elder Matheson dragged his nephew down to the basement around lunchtime the next day, a nice Sunday suit draped over his arm in a garment bag. The man, Tom Neville, got dressed, shaking as he watched Miles to make sure something bad wasn't going to happen—well, something _worse_. He knotted the tie expertly, and didn't resist as Miles pushed him onto a sofa along one wall.

Danny was also dressed up, and his hair had been combed into order, unlike the usual shaggy mess that drove Bass nuts when he saw it. Miles lifted his nephew up and sat him on Tom's lap.

"Tom's gonna be your daddy, buddy," Miles said, tone sweet and sinister. He petted Danny's hair, smoothing a few loose blonde strands away from the boy's forehead. "Doesn't that make you _happy_?"

The boy nodded and forced a weak smile, sniffing back tears that threatened to start coursing down his cheeks. (Bass thought it was hilarious that Tommy-boy was shushing _Danny_ and telling him it would be alright, because that was just…nuts.) Miles pulled out a camera, and began snapping pictures. It took eight tries before he could get his nephew to look at the camera instead of burying his face in Mr. Neville's shoulder. The scene was repeated with Julia, and Bass nearly had a panic attack when his hard work was almost ruined. It wasn't, though, and he calmed down.

Jason wasn't hauled downstairs for participation in the family photo session, although Miles did take Danny upstairs for almost an hour. Then Jason and Danny were dragged back downstairs, Charlie pouting and stomping after her uncle. She was wearing basketball shorts and a t-shirt (Jason's shirt, by the look of it). The family pictures are finished after Miles gets a good shot of Tom, Julia, Jason and Danny seated together like they're one big happy fuckin' family. Charlie got her boytoy back, and stopped pouting.

Bass took Danny back up to his room while Miles made daddy-dearest into another masterpiece of blood and broken bones. The basement was soundproof, so Danny wouldn't hear anything from his room, which was at the end of the hall. Bass looked into Charlie's room on the way, and rolled his eyes. Charlie had a bright blue thong on and nothing else. Jason was tied to a chair, head lolling back. He was unconscious—from blood loss or Charlie putting him through his paces, Bass didn't know. (He had a bottle of whiskey hidden in his room for the occasions he didn't want to think about—such as just _why_ Jason had some of Miles' old clothes on. If he didn't need the protection and comfort a family brought, Bass was pretty sure he'd have left a while ago.)

Danny's room at the end of the hallway is the one room in the whole house he'd never been in to. It was also the biggest. Bass looked around the room as Danny scuttled inside like a kicked puppy, and wondered if gouging his own eyes out would affect his career any. As it was, he'd rather be in Charlie's room, contemplating her rather perfect breasts and the disturbing picture of Jason Neville wearing Miles' clothing. (And how his priest and the majority of the police in the world would tell him he was heading straight to hell or the nearest jail cell for even _contemplating_ Charlie's breasts, seeing as she was just barely past the age of sixteen. It would have been worth it, though.)

Danny's room looked more suited for a three-year-old or someone high on really powerful drugs. There were no hard edges in the room, although Bass did approve of the number of bean bags. None of the movies arranged in alphabetical order on a plastic shelf under the television were above a PG rating. Everything was in primary colors or pastels. Danny was twelve, almost thirteen. This was stupid.

At least the kid was happy with his room.

Bass obediently turned around while Danny changed into pajamas, and tucked him in. It wasn't even five o'clock yet, but the kid looked exhausted and about ready to crash. The former Marine smoothed the blankets over Danny's shoulders one more time and shut the light off before he closed the door. He snorted and rolled his eyes at the sight of a nightlight.

There were nine locks on Danny's door. Bass wasn't sure if the locks were to keep Danny safe, or to keep him locked in. Precious little Danny doesn't seem like the kind of kid who'd need that many locks (on the outside of his door, anyways). It was probably Miles' way of making sure Danny didn't run away and blab to the police—like drugging him to keep him quiet when they went out to hunt. Bass didn't really care what happened to Danny one way or another (although the kid _was_ taking exceptional care of his yellow kitten—more of a cat, now), but the bait had to come from somewhere. Charlie wasn't innocent enough.

Miles added Danny's newest set of "parents" to a photo album after dinner, carefully pasting them onto a new page. Jason was in one of the photos, wearing boxing gloves and looking like he was teaching Danny how to fight. If the cops ever found the book, Bass knows the pooch would be well and truly screwed. The books he'd read when he was younger had told him that the serial killers who kept souvenirs from their kills got caught when the cops found the stash.

He calmed down a bit when Miles put the book into a nice, water-proof, fire-proof, doomsday-proof lockbox and buried it under the back garden, about thirty feet down. Charlie danced around on the snow to get rid of any trace evidence—Miles would remember the location when the next family came along, and the process would get repeated.

In December, a few days before Danny's thirteenth birthday, everyone in the house got to see a different side to the kid. None of them—especially Miles, judging by how red the man's face had gotten—had expected him to pry the screws out of the l-shaped pieces of metal holding his window shut. They definitely hadn't expected him to climb out his window without waking anyone in the house up. (Jeremy was a light sleeper and an insomniac. He hadn't noticed anything, but given that he'd been with Miles…)

Charlie found him at their newest neighbor's house, sucking on an inhaler like there was no tomorrow. It wasn't one of the inhalers Miles kept in store for Danny, because the kid was actually starting to perk up and looked healthy as his lungs opened up.

Nora Clayton was a live-and-let-live kind of girl. She'd lost her baby in a fight, lost her boyfriend a few days later, and her sister had gone missing after shacking up with some loser who liked torturing fathers and sons to death. (Nora's sister, Mia, had shacked up with Strausser. That was enough to condemn everyone in Nora's family, as far as Miles, Bass and Charlie were concerned.)

She'd moved to the countryside to smoke a lot of weed and not have to face her problems—or at least have as little to do with them as possible. Her hobby was bomb-making. It didn't help, though. Miles smiled as he broke down the door. Nora had her phone in one hand and a pistol in the other. She had almost begun dialing 911 when Miles shot the phone out of her hand. Danny screamed and leapt in front of Nora, begging his uncle not to kill her.

Bass held Danny securely on his lap for the short drive back to the farmhouse, relishing the scent of fear that came off Danny in waves. Nora was dragged down to the basement, and Danny was given a spanking that left him unable to walk for three days. Miles told Danny he'd gotten the spanking for being a disobedient little shit, but the only reason he wasn't getting locked in the basement was because he'd brought something home for them.

Charlie sulked when Miles told her she wasn't allowed to play with Nora. Her uncle cheered her up pretty quickly with a private outing that ended a day before Danny's thirteenth birthday. Bass rolled his eyes as Charlie came back into the house, glowing with good energy and cheer. He smirked at Charlie's outraged expression as he popped the last wonton into his mouth. Miles stood back and let his niece do her thing.

The elder Matheson laughed as though it was the funniest thing in the world as Charlie chased Bass around the kitchen with a carving knife. (Any other family would have been horrified at Charlie's overreaction to something so simple, but… Well, they were _Mathesons_.) Bass got Charlie to stop when he promised to teach her how to use his knives properly.

Danny's thirteenth birthday was celebrated in style, after he was finally allowed out of his room. The thirteen-year-old sat quietly at the table, picking at his cake. It was chocolate, with white frosting and sprinkles. (Jeremy said Danny preferred strawberry cake, but wasn't going to make a fuss to anyone about it.) Miles had to threaten him with getting locked in the shed if he kept being ungrateful. Danny made an effort to perk up after that.

He actually fuckin' _smiled_ when the first package was handed to him. He unwrapped it, and the smile just got wider. Danny got a lot of presents, but his favorite was the brand new DVD copy of the _Wizard of Oz_ movie.

Bass learned the story behind the _Oz_ fascination after the tiny family party had been cleaned up and Danny had been packed off to bed, almost an hour past his bedtime. A few years before, the Mathesons had had a live-in nurse for Danny. Her and her two kids had lived with them, and Miles had actually been careful about his killing then.

Maggie Foster had been great for Danny, apparently. He'd been a brilliant, vivacious child—even with the drugs—and had responded well enough to pick up a knife on his own. Unfortunately for his newfound energy, Maggie had decided her kids were more important than Danny and had packed up.

If the former Marine had learned anything during his three years with the Mathesons, it was that you did _not_ put _anything_ ahead of the Matheson family, even if it was _your_ family. Bass just didn't agree with Miles killing Maggie's kids. (It had at least been quick and painless, from what he'd heard.) Kids couldn't help not being able to shut up or how annoying they were.

Still, seeing the picture of Maggie with Danny sitting on her lap in the Family Photo Album is—dare Bass even think it?—kind of cute. Maggie was a cute blonde woman. Her curls spilled over her shoulders, and she was making a really good effort to smile as she cuddled Danny closer to her. Danny was about…six or seven, in the picture. He'd been young enough to get away with sucking his thumb. The boy looked like an angel, blonde hair spilling out around his face like a golden halo.

It took another two years for Bass to get let in on the family secret of just why Danny and Charlie were living with their Uncle Miles instead of with their parents. Bass looked at Charlie with a new sort of respect. They started younger and younger every year, didn't they? Miles looked every inch the proud father (surrogate, in his case) as he clapped a hand on Charlie's shoulder to recount the story. Charlie smiled winningly at Bass, taking dainty little sips of her first beer. (She wasn't old enough, but given that the whole family killed people for fun, Bass didn't think the legality was going to matter much.)

Dear, sweet little Charlie had loved her mommy and daddy very much. Mommy was distant, though, and daddy was wrapped up in his work all the time. Then mommy got pregnant with Danny, which was supposed to make things better. But he didn't, because he was sick all the time. Charlie liked making her baby brother cry when she spent time with him; daddy didn't like her doing that, though, because it gave him headaches and he needed to work. Uncle Miles came to visit around Danny's second birthday, when mommy still wasn't getting better. That was when Uncle Miles saw little Charlie's potential.

Uncle Miles was the one who called the police and the ambulance. He gave them a description of the crazy killer and passed out on the floor from the blood loss, still cradling his precious niece protectively in his arms. Two-year-old Danny was found upstairs in his tiny little bed, crying his little heart out and bleeding from lots of little cuts. The doctors had to work overtime to keep him from dying, and they couldn't make him stop wailing every time he saw his big sister or his uncle.

Eventually, the doctors decided that Danny had been traumatized badly by whatever he'd seen, and told Uncle Miles to get a good specialist to look after his niece and nephew—his nephew especially, though. As Danny grew up, it got more and more apparent that Ben's fears about his youngest spawn growing up to be stupid or retarded are right—the kid didn't like knives, he screamed for hours at the sight of blood, and hid in his stupid fantasy worlds whenever Uncle Miles tried to get him to play the games that Charlie liked. (There was also the reason behind Jeremy being part of the family—Danny had spent exactly _one_ day in a public school. He'd spent the whole day in a corner, bawling his eyes out. At the age of _seven_.)

After that, Bass began spending more time with Charlie. He taught her how to use knives, and how to pin butterflies to boards without damaging the wings. (She preferred the knives, which made Bass roll his eyes. He was basically the only person he knew—aside from Jeremy, who didn't count because he wasn't part of the cadre—who collected butterflies and pressed his own flowers. He needed a new hobby.) He wasn't Miles, though, so he didn't get to keep her forever. Miles was a possessive bastard, and Bass wasn't Charlie's uncle. Charlie kept blossoming.

Oddly, Bass also got closer to Danny. The kid wasn't as much of a pain when his uncle and sister were out of the house, and he was actually alive when Jeremy had left for the summer. There was something to be said about the kid's recovery when no one he had a long history with was around. Bass thought it was odd, but taught the kid how to press flowers and pin butterflies to boards.

The friendship ended up biting him. He was the one who went up to eat dinner with Danny and read him a chapter of the _Wizard of Oz_ at night. Miles thought the friendship was okay, and encouraged it.

Bass was the one who found Danny's letter, shortly before the kid turned seventeen…and the kid.

The Mathesons buried Danny in the back garden, and Bass pasted the second copy of the death certificate into the Family Photo Album. Miles burned the album after that, to Bass' relief.

The Matheson family was kind of screwed up, but at least it was family.

- o – o -

So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Would you like to see more of the crazies or more of their life? Drop a line and let me know.

Author's note: I may be writing more here. The 'verse is not being delivered as-is, and canon here will be fluid, for the most part. Details may not agree across all stories.


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